Sidetrack:
Complete excerpt from Cora Montgomery's description
Back
to main trail
Montgomery (aka Jane Cazneau) would meet up with Coacoochee and John Horse in
their later visits to Texas, leaving some of the more detailed
written impressions of both characters. Below is the complete excerpt
recording her first impressions of the Black Seminole and
Seminole Indian refugees as they emerged from the wilderness
at Eagle Pass in July 1850. The excerpt was originally published in
Montgomery's 1852 book Eagle Pass; or, Life on the Border:
"From the broken ground in a direction that we knew was untraversed by any but the wild and hostile Indians, came forth a long procession of horsemen. The sun flashed back from a mixed array of arms and barbaric gear, but as this unexpected army, which seemed to have dropped upon us from the skies, drew nearer it grew less formidable in apparent numbers, and opened upon us a more pacific aspect. Some reasonably well-mounted Indians circled round a dark-nucleus of female riders, who seemed objects of special care. But the long-straggling rear-guard was worth seeing. It threw Falstaff's ragged regiment altogether in the shade. Such an array of all manners and sizes of animals, mounted by all ages, sexes and sizes of negroes, piled up to a most bewlidering height, on and among such a promiscuous assemblage of blankets, babies, cooking utensils, and savage traps, in general, never were or could be held together on horseback by any beings on earth but themselves and their red brothers. The party began to break away and vanish into the little ravines that dip down to the river edge, and we understood by these signs that they were camping among
us."
:
Montgomery 73-74. ©
Part 3, Exile: l |